See inside Australia's next iconic building

Posted
January 27, 2014 20:28:00

A new building emerging in Sydney's Chinatown is being touted as the city's most remarkable construction since the Opera House and, for those working on it, architect Frank Gehry's creation is a job of a lifetime.

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: A new building in Sydney's Chinatown is being touted as the city's most remarkable construction since the Opera House.

It's designed by the legendary American architect Frank Gehry for the University of Technology.

The building resembles a crumpled paper bag, and if you guessed that's pretty demanding work for bricklayers, well, you'd be right about that.

Here's reporter Adam Harvey.

ADAM HARVEY, REPORTER: High above Sydney's Chinatown is a building site like no other where the degree of difficulty torments some of the best bricklayers in the trade.

GUS GALATI, BRICKLAYING SUPERVISOR: It's a confusing job and some of the bricklayers, they need to keep reminding them every day what we have to do and the way it goes. It's stressful. Some days are better, but most of the time, it's stressful.

ADAM HARVEY: The University of Technology Sydney's business school will become one of the city's landmarks, because it looks like nothing else.

I can see a problem with your wall. It's not straight.

RAY FAVETTI, FAVETTI BRICKLAYING: No, it's not meant to be straight. If it was straight, then we've made some mistakes - big ones.

ADAM HARVEY: The UTS knew what it was getting into when it hired the Pritzker Prize-winning American architect Frank Gehry. He's one of the world's most-admired architects. His best-known design is for Spain's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

Gehry's Sydney creation is equally eye-catching. It's called the Chau Chak Wing Building after the Chinese businessman who has donated $25 million to the university.

BRIAN MOORE, UTS PROJECT MANAGER: It'll be second to the Opera House. I mean, people go to Spain to look at Gaudi buildings and I can easily see this being similar to that. It's that iconic.

ADAM HARVEY: It's still under wraps, so most Sydneysiders are barely aware it's there. But there's a lot going on behind the scaffolding. When it's finished in August, it will have cost around $180 million, partly because it's very hard to build.

BRIAN MOORE: It's extremely complex. The brickwork has never been done before. The organic nature of it, the fact that it curves both horizontally and vertically, is pretty extreme in terms of applying brickwork to a facade like this.

ADAM HARVEY: The tough job of turning Gehry's drawings into undulating walls one brick at a time went to contractor Ray Favetti.

RAY FAVETTI: It's hard. All I can say is it's like a snake trying to crawl up a wall, you know, wriggling up the wall, a brown paper bag that's been crushed and then just released to try and find its natural form.

ADAM HARVEY: Before the first break was laid, engineers had to be sure the overhanging bricks couldn't fall off.

BRIAN MOORE: As you corbel out with the brickwork, the mortar's soft when you put the first brick on, and as you keep going up, because the bricks are corbelling out, the mortar starts to settle. So we have to develop a system where the bricks would actually hold in place.

ADAM HARVEY: The solution was a custom-made groove-and-bolt system.

GUS GALATI: The brickwork corbels in, the little plate goes on the back of the brick, which you hold it from falling down. It's a great design and seems to work.

ADAM HARVEY: Each of the 380,000 bricks in the building is bolted to a steel frame.

GUS GALATI: This kind of brickwork's never been done before, so it's the first time that we all say, "OK, how are we going to do it?" Especially when we first started, how do the brick, standing up at 27, 28 degrees. It's something for everyone to look at it and say, "Wow," you know. 'Cause at the moment while the scaffold is here, you can't really see the whole building, but once the scaffold goes down, this become like the Opera House, yeah.

ADAM HARVEY: There's no margin for error. The position of every brick is checked and rechecked. It makes for slow work.

GUS GALATI: A normal bricklayer lay 400, 500, 600 bricks a day, but this job here, 70, 80, and a straighter wall, maybe 100, 120. In the beginning, it was embarrassing: bricklayer it was only lay 100 bricks. But, this is the way the job is.

ADAM HARVEY: Specially-shaped K bricks giver texture and shadow to the wall and each one has to be laid in precisely the right place.

PAUL SIMMONS, BRICKLAYER: That's how it's done, yeah.

ADAM HARVEY: That's why it takes so long.

PAUL SIMMONS: It does, yeah. So, as you can see, they're everywhere. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work on a building like this. It's going to be, you know, known throughout Sydney, New South Wales, the world, so.

GUS GALATI: Mate, this will be the highlight of my career. I can bring my grandchildren here and say, "Look, I done this 40 years ago, 20 years ago and that was a stressful job that I done, but, yeah, this will be the highlight of my career.

TONY HILTON, BRICKLAYER: Bring in the tradesmen's skills back into (inaudible), yeah, bricklaying was sort of getting a bit mundane and now it's, yeah, showing our skills.

ADAM HARVEY: When the building's finished, bricklayer Tony Hilton will have a life-long reminder of what he helped create.

TONY HILTON: The tattoo's still a work in progress, like the job. For as ugly as the building is, it's a beautiful building and it's just going to be mind-blowing when it's finished, when the curtain comes down and everyone sees what it is. It's going to spin the other bricklayers out in the city, just wondering how we did it.